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 Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:28 pm
"I spend a lot- I mean, I-" Jabril grew flustered. "I ha' work. I don't- D'ye think it really matters?"
In other words, Jabril spent too much time absorbed in his own little world of work to notice too much about what was going on in his own cave. Every room except for the main laboratory was a jumble of paper scraps and old experimental detritus. Had he been a human, he might have hired a maid, but what was a busy kitsu to do when his head was in his equations and his heart had no care for neatness?
Jabril inched one of the shelves away from the wall, and caught a glimpse of a yawning hole beyond it. What had once been a natural crevasse was widened by what looked like bite-marks.
"Ye want t'help me wit' movin' this?"
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Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 8:38 pm
"It should matter." But to each their own, and if that was the top priority for Jabs, so be it. Setsu merely leaned against the wall for a moment, letting the cool stone touch her forehead to keep her alert. She could use another nap soon enough. In fact, she looked forward to it for the first time, now that she knew she could wake up from them.
The undead kitsu turned her attention across the room to the other kitsu, one ear perking as he examined the cluttered spaces of the walls. And when he paused, she waited in silence for any results. And apparently there was some. Setsu stepped away from the wall and stepped across the room to his request, eyeing the bookshelf up and down. "Oh yes, I had forgotten. "We in'ellectuals are fragile," right?" What an excuse of a stereotype. Front paws rested against the object, the femme measuring how far it needed to be moved before waiting on the male to help.
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:51 pm
"Tha' we are," Jabril agreed. With Setsu's aid the shelf moved fairly easily. The exertion made Jabril's forelegs ache, but... there was nothing un-manly about that! The metal edges dug into his skin! It was painful! He had a runner's build!
Hmph.
"An' what d'ye spend yuir days dion'?" He returned fire. There wasn't any malice in his tone, but if Setsu was going to dish it out, she had to learn to take it. "Wanderin' an' broodin' on how dead ye are? I ha' an honorable profession, I'll ha' ye know."
The pair headed into the dark, cramped little tunnel while they talked.
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:46 pm
Alright, task done. Setsu peered at her paws with a frown, patting them against each other to get rid of dust. Hmm, and the sedatives were still helping in that she didn't even feel tuggings to her stretches.
Brow twitch. The femme shot the slimer and fragiler male a glance, as if daring him to continue. Of course she meant no real harm, but you know...it'd be nice to test her strength after such a long sleep. "You do remember the bleeding, don't you?" Setsu turned her head to the hole in the wall, crouching to look deeper in the tunnel. One ear flicked to smack the back of Jab's head as he chose the word 'brooding'.
Waiting as the scientist made a good head start, Setsu soon followed in the cavern.
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Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:14 pm
"Bleedin', ye say? If ye spend all yuir days bleedin', it's no wonder yuir in such a mood, more often than not." Jabril shrugged off the ear-flick. His voice rose into a high falsetto and he tried to flatten his accent as best he could. "Ooooh, I'm dead, snip snip snap!"
He cleared his throat to return his voice to normal, and suppressed the very immature urge to stick his tongue out at her. Setsu probably wouldn't see it anyway. This tunnel was very dark.
"If ye ask me, then-"
Jabril paused. The cavern had widened, and a bit of natural light shone through a crack in the ceiling. There was a pile of objects to one side of the make-shift room - a broken chair, a gnawed old incubator, a couple of dolls, his fourth-best coat. The kind of rubbish a child would treasure. He thought he made out the edge of a blade amongst the pile.
More worrying was the glyph on the wall above it.
"I- I know tha' mark." Jabril squinted up at it.
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:51 am
"You wanna describe that mood to me then? Cause you're none too helping with it now." She swapped a paw against one of his tails half-heartedly as they moved along. And eyes could only roll at his attempts to duplicate her voice. His accent was far too embedded to hide even for such short acts.
The kitsu paused when the other did, tilting her head to glimpse the diameter of the widened tunnel, almost like a meager room. "Well, she has your hobbies for certain." Setsu pointed to the pile of stuff and junk collected in the corner. Still, she padded over to that corner and began shifting through the odd pile, hoping to find her property in the collection.
"What mark?" It was an off-hand statement as she picked up a dusty coat, shaking it off with a frown. No use. She discarded the soiled cloth before turning her neck towards Jabril's direction, eyes scanning up to the small marking in the wall.
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:47 pm
Jabril glanced over at Godiva's pile of treasures, then bowed his head. Orange and green locks of hair hung down to obscure his expression.
Like him, was it? But Godiva could never be Jabril's pupil or successor. Not while she couldn't see, and she had that insatiable appetite. She had to remain nothing more than a subject.
"Did ye find your sword?" He knocked his pay against the stone wall under the glyph, testing to make sure that it was not hollow. Several pots of coffee had gone towards keeping him awake, to run tests while Setsu was asleep, in case she refused to wake up. But now he felt so weary. Jabril hated it when reality defied chemistry.
"We ha' t'get out o' here. M'serious."
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Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 5:23 pm
The body language went unseen by Setsu asa she continued her rummaging, though ears pinned back to the stiffling silence. Eyes narrowed as a gleam caught her sight, and Setsu reached her paw out to dust away bits of wood. There amongst the chewed decay was her blade, still encased in it's sleek and glossed sheath. The kitsu was quick to reclaim it with a glance over, pleased that it's condition was fine.
"Aye." The femme twisted her form to peer back at the other, her paws set to focused work on retying the weapon to her belt. And once done, her steps echoed in the cavern as she padded towards the other kitsu, eyes to the glyph. Just what did it mean? And why did it seem to affect Jabril in a way more...unhealthy than his scientific addictions?
Blinking curtly, she turned to the scientist, before glimpsing around the room. "What's wrong?" She normally wouldn't even think of prying. She never enjoyed to. But if there was any urgency or threat to his statement, she'd need to know why.
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 3:17 pm
The long, soft for if Jabril's tails rustled, so he knew that there must be some opening supplying fresh air to this place. If the tunnel only opened on his storage room then the atmosphere would be too stale for him to breathe.
But there was a smooth, dark twist in the walls near the glyph, and with the way it yawned into the abyss, Jabril doubted that it led anywhere but down.
"Tha's an Egyptian sign. Fer electrum."
He struck the wall with one paw as hard as he could, scraping his claws on the rough stone. It did not good, of course.
"I hate bloody feckin' magic!"
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Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 5:09 pm
(me confused abit about the setting, just how big is the cavern? And are you saying there is a deep hole in the ceiling beside the glyph?) 8D;
Setsu remained still against any signs of air drafts, almost as if ignoring it. The only movement from her was of the dangling feather swinging delicately side to side. Eyes were busy absorbing the symbol before them, trying to remember it or even recognize it from somewhere else. "Electrum?" And what did that mean? She was no scientist, nor was she Egyptian.
Ears brushed her shoulders as the male suddenly slammed the wall, her eyeing him quietly. Was he trying to destroy it? Setsu glanced the room once more, curious why magic would be hidden here. And they still hadn't found Godiva. "So. What is there to do about it?"
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 3:27 pm
"An electrical conductor. Alloy o' gold an' silver. I used some meself, when I had t'rebuild th'Project, 'cos-" He shook his head. "It does'na matter."
Jabril started pacing the length of their bit of corridor. It wasn't like him to look so agitated. Even when Setsu was insulting his build and bleeding all over his carpet, he'd kept a sense of vague good humor about him, and he found it in him to enjoy even the strangest incidents so long as there was a scientific payoff.
"Can ye scour it off wit' yuir sand?"
He blew his bangs out of his face. All the better for Setsu to see how on-edge he was. Jabril's pupils were dilated. Setsu could see his fangs.
"Bloody magic."
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:10 pm
Oh, well that made more sense. But from simple view, it appeared like nothing more than a scribble in solid stone. No metals. The femme remained seated and watchful as the scientist began pacing, one brow lifting lightly to him. She did have nerves, yes, so Jabril's rising sense of anxiety was rubing off on her. But an undead face prooved nothing other than placid tiredness.
Tails tapped the ground to his request, Setsu turning once more to the glyph. One 'knuckle' tapped at the wall, testing its texture and density, so to say. Different variables required different energy, but this shouldn't be too hard. "Hey now.." Eyes flicked to the scientist with a twitched muzzle. "I'm not gonna be electrecuted now, right?" She had that new rib, and she didn't know what may happen if she touched the rune directly. Otherwise, yes, it could be scoured.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 4:30 pm
"Stone canna conduct lightnin', yeh? If ye do'na touch it, ye ought t'be fine."
Jabril refused to believe that this sign was some stupid magic thing that broke all his laws of physics. He refused! It was a dumb prank. There couldn't possibly be some mystic labyrinth underneath his nice, safe burrow.
And where had Godiva been going? A strange, foreign feeling made his heart beat double-time. She could be anywhere in this darkness, and Jabril had no means to find her.
He looked Setsu in the eye.
"Please."
It wasn't a word she was likely to hear from him again.
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:02 pm
Setsu eyed the other with a waiting air. He was holding no sarcasm now, true. But Setsu was still undecided. Was this an honest threat that she was unaware of? Or was this just a visual nuisance to the morals of a scientist? The femme didn't hand out her services for such trivial reasons of the personal ego.
Shifting caught her attention and Setsu gave a blank glance to the other. Then it turned to one of discomfort as Jabril reduced to a plea. That bothered her...deeply. She never wanted anyone asking or expecting something of her. And it was her first mistake to have done so with the other.
A begrudged paw pressed against the stone, just abit under the target. The touch alone already made her aware of the familiar substance, and Setsu closed her eyes to further her investigation. She balance the strength of the wall with the strength of her ability. And with an attachment like precious veins, she began to tug and demand of the wall. Moments passed with a tense brow, before finally she pushed her paw against the stone. It cracked shallowly, and like brittle plaster the outer layer with the engraved mark crumbled into sharp pieces of stone to the floor.
"Done."
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Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 5:56 pm
Jabril breathed a sigh of relief. His ears perked him, and the corners of his mouth quirked with his usual enthusiasm. He'd been all kinds of worked up over nothing.
"There we are. I-"
He looked down one of the dark corridors.
"I canna think how t'find Godiva in here, but m'bettin' she has 'er ways, if she's been in an' out before, yeh? T'is only proper. When I was a wee kit I travelled th'whole mountain. If there's a problim, I'll find me brother an' sister, an' we c'n smell 'er out."
So really, really, Jabril shouldn't be so worried over a simple test subject. Even if he was.
"Must be a natural formation, buildin' off the one I put me home in, yeh? Nothin' t'fear. Tha' glyph was some kind o' prank, or-"
The cavern rumbled, stone walls vibrating below them. Something bellowed in the depths.
"I do'nae believe this!"
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